In the West, what exists is progress; in the East, what exists is a state of having progressed: one offers a villa, the other offers a monastery…
In the West, what exists is progress; in the East, what exists is a state of having progressed: one offers a villa, the other offers a monastery…
― Atrona Grizel
If I were physically disabled—if, for example, I were confined to a wheelchair—I would naturally become isolated, and since I would have more time available, I would spend that time entirely withdrawing into myself. What my legs could not offer me, my imagination would begin to provide. The rest of my body would fade into the background as my mind expanded, and I would start to live purely in abstraction, deriving an almost wild pleasure from it. I would have easy access to the internet, and because I would be exempt from many responsibilities, I could use it for long stretches exactly as I wished. Rather than being assimilated into internet culture, I would devote my time to learning languages, developing skills, and ultimately building a world here in the virtual realm, like hyperreality. Since limitation narrows the field of distraction, and since fewer options actually mean more immersion, I would produce a surprising amount of work—perhaps games, virtual worlds, concepts, songs, books, paintings, and many other things. I would have countless intellectual hobbies, because with the body effectively removed from the stage, the entire arena would belong to the mind. Stephen Hawking is a good example of this. And I must admit: if that were the case—if I were unable to walk and thus forced to observe life from a distance—I would take refuge in my inner world as the only viable path. The social distance I felt from the rest of humanity would, in a way, encourage and facilitate this retreat. That inner world would expand enormously, swelling until it became far richer than the mental life I live now. Right now, my body is little more than a burden that disrupts my mind, and its disappearance would clear the path for my mind rather than obstruct it. I am not disgusted by my body itself, but by the very fact of having a body. Would this physical constraint continue like that for decades? Perhaps. Seen from one angle, of course, it would be terribly monotonous: living life merely in order to endure life. At that point, the capacity to bend time would enter the picture—the ability to ignore reality, even to become “schizophrenic” without fear, because one would recognize that the reality offered by the world holds nothing particularly appealing. When physical existence becomes unbearable, a person should not be forced to merely “escape” from it but must be able to defect from it and migrate into the transphysical. Reality is optional. And so one might flee into a parallel reality, declare the world’s version of reality illegitimate, ultimately discard it, and remain there indefinitely—sustained by a quiet, unbroken serenity.
― Atrona Grizel
In incidents of mass violence in intimate spaces—for example, when a student kills classmates in a classroom—a state of mourning is declared in the country, everyone sheds tears, and in this way the victims are placed entirely in the role of innocence while only the killer is demonized. What is forgotten in this mourning is the following: if that student could reach the point of becoming a killer, then no one in that classroom cared about their well-being, because there was a process of alienation between them. This alienation was not resolved, because its persistence indicates that it was simply not cared about; it reflects the fact that everyone lives separate lives and therefore does not care much about those outside their own circle, and thus does not even recognize them as relevant beings. Yet this mutual lack of care is, strangely, only noticed when the killer responds in a more radical way. Even then, only the killer is condemned. However, killers rarely become killers on their own. First, they are victims of their own emotions, and second, victims of their own society.
― Atrona Grizel
Being surrounded by fools forces a person, if they do not wish to see themselves as a fool in the same way those people do, to constantly filter the outside world. When this becomes chronic, it turns into a permanent state of awareness that can never be switched off. Thus, in the end, the person transforms into a kind of visionary paranoiac who misses not even the smallest detail and is always thinking about everything, all in an effort to protect their self-perception from ignorance. However, those who have never experienced what it is like to be the only intelligent person among a room of complete idiots never feel the need to develop such awareness, because the place they belong to is already the herd.
― Atrona Grizel
The primary purpose of an efficient education would be to create a disciplined youth that will not be instantly seduced by liberal, humanist, and democratic values but rather will penetrate their surface and access their rotten core.
― Atrona Grizel